Why Dementia Is a Population-Level Problem

ementia is typically thought of and treated as an individual sickness. Unlike something like measles, dementia is non-transferrable, and can’t be vaccinated against. But Malaz Boustani, a professor of medicine at Indiana University, thinks that the right way to think about dementia may be through the lens of epidemiology—“the branch of medicine that deals with the incidence, distribution, and possible control of diseases and other factors relating to health.” After all, like many viral diseases, dementia ends up affecting a large